Category Archives: Rant

I don’t like undercoating models when it is cold or raining, the moisture in the air can sometimes react with the spray paint and make the surface very rough. I had this experience once with a very nice resin vehicle and really never want to repeat it.
So here I am with a growing pile of models waiting for a dry non-freezing weekend day to get spraying…

I have been having a bit of computer trouble recently, my main super duper kick ass desktop has blown its motherboard. Again.

As my better half has been using the other system for a very important paper she is writing, I have not been doing much, other than taking out the hard discs from the dead system and trying to access the data. I have backups but they were a few days old when the systems failed and I had been writing loads into my Steam Wars rules and I really don’t want to write it again.

I popped on to Tabletop Gaming News the other day for a quick look to see what is happening in the world of toy soldiers only to find that eight out of the first ten articles are about new Kickstarters. I have dabbled in a few Kickstarters over the last few years, but I find it amazing that there is so much capacity for more and more Kickstarters.

The hunger for more and more games, especially board games, just dilutes the amount of time we as players have to actually play the same game more than a few times. I struggle as it is to find the time to play the games we already have.

I have just joined in on the Astropolis miniatures Kickstarter, but this is quite a small offering that will be delivered in about two months and I was only going for a few models.

Mr Steinberg made the point the other day that are too many games vying for our attention. This is indeed true. The problem is that we keep buying even more new rules and adding to the pile…

Osprey Publishing keep on popping out nice little rulesets for different periods and genres that seem like a good idea to try out.

A conversation sort of goes like this;

“Seen that new set of rules coming out next month, [insert book name here] looks interesting and you only need ten figures to get stuck in.”

“I have some of those from [insert a model range here] that I don’t use any more.”

“…and I have always wanted to get some of these [insert independent model company here] figures just because they are great sculpts and would look brilliant painted.”

..and so on.

The end result is that new rule books are constantly acquired and in some cases a game is arranged to try them out. But in quite a few cases, the rules end up on a shelf as other even newer shiny toys distract an honest wargamer with limited gaming time, but who can always find a few pounds sterling to spend on a discounted book.

Since reorganising my book shelves, I have grouped all the unplayed rules into one section, which takes up more space than one would like.

On The Seven Seas is an Osprey pirate game that grabbed my attention, I was particularly interested in the rules for sailing ships at 28mm scale as I appear to have a small fleet of large ships.

Fighting boarding actions has always been a game scenario I have wanted to play out. In the end, I just built my own ships and wrote my own rules using the core of my No Quarter game and coming up with a Naval Battles supplement.

Of course it is not only Osprey who are banging out new rules to tempt us, there are plenty of books from other publishers on my bookshelf that have been sitting there for a while in some cases. However Osprey books do have a habit of being very reasonably priced as well as being about as regular as a monthly magazine.

I’m not sure when it was released, probably quite a few years ago as I have had models from the Black Scorpion pirate range crewing my ships for quite some time, but I bought Cutlass earlier this year to add to the pirate games on my book shelf, which as a period by itself seems to have more than its fair share of rule books. Cutlass is a set of rules by Gav Thorpe, once of Game$ Work$hop fame, or infamy depending on your view. Personally speaking, anyone who can make a living at their hobby is doing very well indeed.

Fighting Sail is a game at yet another scale, about 1/1200 (or even 1/2400) which allows whole fleets of sailing ships to do battle. I think the plan here is for us to use the Pirates of the Spanish Main cardboard ships from Wizkids that were common a few years ago. I’m sure I have a few around somewhere in the Loft Full Of Lead. Apparently, if I am short a ship or two, then Mr Steinberg can apparently provide an entire fleet. For both sides. And a friend.

I don’t think I will be playing Freebooters Fate as the game uses profile cards for specific models. Much as though the Freebooters Fate models are very nice, they are quite expensive and I already have plenty of generic pirate, navy and swashbuckling models.

So in total, I currently have four pirate or ship based rule books sitting on the shelf which fall into the unplayed category. That is just the pirate rules.

One of the Kickstarters I went in for ages ago was Relic Knights, an anime style small scale game with some really nicely designed figures. However, as it was so late delivering, the guys at my local games club had lost interest and moved on to other even newer things.

Anyway, I have finally started to put together some of the Black Diamond models as I think they could be used as Special Forces models in other games. But with luck, I will actually get a game using the Relic Knights rules as well.

Not since the days of Game$ Work$hop’$ Epic have I played a games around the 1/300th scale. Dropship Commander looked very tempting, but having bought the rule book, I resisted, as on reflection, an army of these lovely models would be quite expensive and take an awful lot of painting.

The other problem is that I don’t have a great deal of appropriately scaled scenery. Apart from my really old polystyrene Epic buildings and some slightly less old cardboard Epic buildings, I would be relying on the smallest trees in my terrain collection and some hills.

I am still tempted by gaming at 1/300th scale, ages ago I bought a small army of Brigade Games tanks, APC’s and some Germy infantry. They are sort of painted, but not actually found a set of rules, or an opponent to try them out.

Kampfgruppe Normandy was an impulse buy several years ago at Salute I think. Basically, Game$ Work$hop were selling off piles of these books for £5 each. Lets face it, at that price what is not to like. Of course the problem is actually getting to play the game. I have plenty of World War II models and lots of appropriate terrain, just not the get up and go to get up and play. I guess the main problem is that Kampfgruppe Normandy is competing with Bolt Action which is a WWII game that has plenty of players, support, new rules and a large range of models.

In Her Majesty’s Name is another in the steampunk genre. With the plethora of appropriate models being painted around here over the last year or so, another set of rules seemed like a good idea, but with Empire Of The Dead and my very own Steam Wars, I’m sure when will get around to it. There is even a supplement available but I am definitely not getting that until I at least give the core book a go. How hard can it be?

Going back a few years, I was at Salute with Joken and he really fancied trying out a small scale Samurai game. We bought some Samurai models with a view to painting them up and perhaps downloading a freebie set of pdf rules. It was not long after Salute that we discovered Bushido and were sucked into the world of fantasy Samurai. As it turned out, the Bushido guys were all ex-Confrontation players and that sat very well indeed with us. But not one to pass yet another rule book to read, I bought Ronin as a possible alternative.

The most recent acquisition is the Black Ops book. This is indeed one of those games that tempts me because of all the fantastic models out there waiting to be bought and painted. For Black Ops I thought the Black Scorpion modern US Marines would have been perfect, but they seem to have disappeared from the Black Scorpion web site. But don’t panic, Hasslefree have a load of modern soldiers perfect for the job. With all the other projects on the go, perhaps by Salute next year I will be ready to buy some.

EDIT: I did forget one, I bought Stargrunt II at a show years ago as I have so many figures from different ranges and this may have been a way to get them all into a game.

I think that is the new and unplayed list, although it does not include a board game or two that languishes in the Loft Full Of Lead. There could be more that have been unplayed for so long that I have forgotten about them.

I had been using Army Painter resin “dip” to shade models, as will have been seen in the Orc posting extravaganza over recent weeks. Since then I have moved on to their ink version.
I have found that each have their pro’s and cons.
The biggest things against the tinned resin dip are;
(1) the tin never seals very well and a large amount of the dip will dry up. I usually lost about a third of a can. As you can see in the photo below, you can end up with a massively thick layer of dried up dip, and what is below becomes unusable.
(2) The price. Considering how much was wasted, it was actually an expensive way to shade models.
(3) As it leaves a gloss finish, it is necessary to matt varnish the models to get rid of the shine.
(4) It is messy, smells and brushes need to be cleaned with white spirit.
But I do like the results from the resin dip, the models come up very nicely.

Over the last year or so I have been using the ink version of the Army Painter. As this comes in small bottles, it only costs a couple of quid at a time, it is water based, has a matt finish and does not go off. The finished results may not be quite as good, but it is much easier to work with. So I will be sticking with the Army Painter Dark Tone ink for the foreseeable future.